Austin-based singer-songwriter Bill Carter’s list of bona fides is so long, it’s hard to decide which credits to note first. We could start with his first big songwriting score, “Why Get Up?,” heard on the Fabulous Thunderbirds’ breakout album, Tuff Enuff. There’s a breakfast cereal commercial that earned the about-to-be-evicted Carter and his co-writer wife, Ruth Ellsworth, a then-huge $25,000 payday. Then there’s “Crossfire,” the No. 1 hit they wrote with Chris Layton, Tommy Shannonand Reese Wynans — a.k.a. Double Trouble, the band who backed T-bird Jimmie Vaughan’s little brother, Stevie Ray. Or there’s “Anything Made of Paper,” penned for the West Memphis 3’s Damien Echols, which Carter recorded with pal Johnny Depp and performed on the Late Show With David Letterman. Featured in the West of Memphis documentary and on the accompanying soundtrack, it’s also an award-winning animated video.

Carter’s songs have been covered by scores of major artists, from John Mayall and Ruth Brown to Robert Palmer and Waylon Jennings; among his accolades is a BMI Million Air award for more than three million “Crossfire” spins. But Carter has also released several albums of his own, the latest of which, Innocent Victims and Evil Companions, bowsFebruary 26, 2016, on Forty Below Records.